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LAHORE, July 30: The Agritech has filed a petition with National Industrial Relations Commission to allow the company to lay off its thousands of workers.

The company has informed the commission that production at the factory at Iskandarabad has been curtailed to the lowest minimum on account non-supply of Sui Gas, which is the only raw material required for manufacturing urea.

As a result of non-supply of Sui Gas, production of fertiliser has been severely curtailed and the plant could only produce 149,071 tons of urea during 2011 against its capacity of 430,000 tons.

In 2012, the production till June 30 was 69,327 tons (or 30 per cent) of its capacity, whereas production in July is nil and there are no indications of gas supply restoration.

Agritech in its petition further stated that the petitioner company is sustaining huge financial losses. In the last 18 months, the company has suffered an accumulated loss of around Rs1.6 billion. The company has taken out heavy loans from the banks and is unable to pay back the loans because of financial crisis, despite the fact they were restructured last year.

The petition further says that under such conditions, it is impossible to run the factory at Iskandarabad without incurring further losses, which is not financially possible for the company.